The City of Redmond’s citizen Task Force on Homelessness recently released a report with recommendations on how to address visible homelessness throughout the city.
The 14-member group was formed following a community meeting in March that brought together residents, business owners, members of local advocacy groups and faith communities and more. The meeting began the community’s conversation on how to address local homelessness.
That conversation continued with the task force as members examined the issue and worked to come up with possible solutions.
THE TASK FORCE
According to a city press release, task force members represented many sectors, including business and property owners, agencies that provide services to homeless individuals, the faith community, the King County Library, residents and members of the Redmond Human Services Commission and the Public Safety Advisory Committee. The task force met six times from April to August and presented its final report to Redmond City Council on Sept. 22. The final report details the activities of the task force and includes a slate of recommended action steps.
Carolyn Mansfield, a member of the task force and the city’s human services commission, said the recommendations they offered fell under six areas of concerns.
Those concerns are: Improving public safety and reducing crime; expanding and improving services to sheltered and unsheltered individuals experiencing homelessness; expanding, improving and mitigating impacts of shelter and housing options for the people experiencing homelessness and people with barriers to market housing; improving public (business, residents) understanding/ability to assist; advocacy and other.
Some of the task force’s recommendations include increasing police bike patrols in downtown by retail properties and on trails, implementing a community awareness campaign and advocating at the state and national levels to restore funding for mental health services.
To read the entire report and to learn about all of the task force’s recommendations, visit tinyurl.com/n9q2nrr.
PUTTING IN THE WORK
In addition to the six task force meetings, Mansfield said members looked at the comments people made during the community meeting in March.
Redmond community planning assistant director Colleen Kelly said the task force’s report is final and the commenting period is now closed, anyone who has questions or would like to discuss how they can get involved can contact her at ckelly@redmond.gov.
Mansfield said the task force also did a lot of individual and small-group work to learn more about the situation, she said. Some of that work included site visits and looking at results from focus groups conducted by city staff. Mansfield said there were a number of focus groups and they included individuals who were homeless sharing their stories as well as members from the local business community who shared some of the struggles they have been dealing with since there are now more visible homeless individuals.
Meghan Altimore, another task force member who also works for Hopelink in Redmond, said it was good to hear from local businesses to learn about the challenges they are facing such as property damage and loitering.
“I am grateful to our task force members who spent several months to develop recommendations to address these community concerns through local action and regional advocacy,” said Redmond Mayor John Marchione in the city press release. “Homelessness is a complex community issue and I appreciate the many contributions of those who will be part of the solution going forward.”
A REGIONAL ISSUE
With 14 individuals with different backgrounds and experiences with homelessness — including those who were vocally unhappy with the situation — Altimore said there were not many disagreements, but there were many different points of views on how they should deal with the situation.
This being said, Altimore said one thing that happened on the task force that she found heartening was when one of the members, who was a property manager for a downtown Redmond apartment, was transferred to another apartment building in her company that is located in Seattle. Altimore said the woman chose to remain on the task force despite no longer having a Redmond tie — she was that invested in the issue.
Altimore noted that homelessness is not limited to Redmond. It is a regional issue and needs to be addressed as such.
Redmond City Council member Kim Allen agreed that addressing homelessness does not mean working separately from other jurisdictions and municipalities.
“While the visibility of the homeless population has certainly increased during the years of the last recession, the answer is not to send these folks somewhere else,” she said. “That just kicks the can down the road. I will continue to support Redmond’s efforts to help those in need by connecting them with the people and agencies that can lead to a way out of poverty and into more stable lives. How we treat those with the least among us is a measure of our own worth.”
NEXT STEPS
Now that the task force has completed its work and presented its final report, Redmond Police Chief Ron Gibson said four members of the task force will continue to serve on an implementation committee along with him and Kelly.
“The goal of the implementation committee is to the ensure we have follow through on the recommendations from the larger group,” he said.
Gibson said the implementation committee will work with various stakeholder groups in an effort to actually implement the task force recommendations.
“I look forward to continuing to work with the task force members and mitigating the impacts of homelessness in our community with the implementation committee,” he said. “The impacts of homelessness is not just a problem to be solved by city staff. All community members are stakeholders in this community wide concern.”
